The Executive Director is the chief executive officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, overseeing the operations of the Foundation and its professional staff. The Executive Director reports to the Board of Trustees. The Wikimedia Foundation's current Executive Director is Katherine Maher.

Katherine was appointed Executive Director in July 2016, after serving as the organization’s first Chief Communications Officer. She has lived and worked around the world, leading the introduction of technology and innovation in human rights, good governance, and international development. She was a founding member of the UNICEF Innovation team, where she helped introduce open source innovation for health and child welfare. She has worked with the National Democratic Institute, the World Bank, and Access Now on programs supporting innovative technologies for democratic participation, civic engagement, youth entrepreneurship, open government, and human rights.

Contents

The function of this position is to run the business side of the Wikimedia Foundation so as to provide resources to keep the projects going. For the most part, the Executive Director will not be involved with how the community operates on individual projects.

To help inform the decision making of the Executive Director, they often participate in community events, host office hours, and send updates to the communities on their activities and the activities of the Wikimedia Foundation.